Gadio urges Diaspora intellectuals to return to Africa

Dakar- Senegal (PANA) -- Senegalese Foreign Minister Cheikh Tidiane Gadio Friday extended a fervent plea to intellectuals in the Diaspora to return to Africa.
In an interview with PANA on the sidelines of the ongoing conference by intellectuals from the Diaspora and Africa, Gadio said the intellectuals still refer to the situations in the '60s, when coups were perpetrated in Africa and when their views led to imprisonment or even assassinations.
Recognising how that was a reality in the continent, Gadio hopes that with Africa of good governance, Africa after the Algiers convention against coups and anti-constitutional changes, Africa of human rights promotion, the African intellectuals can live in Africa without being jailed or suffering from abuses against their integrity.
"I think that a new leaf has been turned over," he said, but quickly admitted that isolated incidents may occur.
In addition to the problems relating to personal security and freedom of thought, the Senegalese Foreign minister raised the issue of economic security.
"It is the courageous intellectual choice, which consists in making sacrifices, living and sharing our people's sufferings that is relevant for our intellectuals? Are they ready to reconsider the question and accept to take the opposite direction, come back to Africa under construction, accept salaries, which are not the same as what they may earn abroad?" Gadio wondered, adding that the question is rather a generation challenge to the current intellectuals in the Diaspora.